A finished ripple appears {blogtoberfest day 1}

This has been a long time coming!! I first ordered the yarn for this blanket in July 2012, so it’s been around three years in the making! It’s been done in a lot of fits and spurts, the first colour repeat came together nicely, until I got stuck on whether to include a grey or not. Once I got that dealt with, I powered through on a road trip and knocked out a few bands. We headed to Sydney for Camp K and I realised I’m an absolute goose and was doing a not-quite-normal stitch, which gave it some extra texture. It was put aside through the first half of 2013 as I battled through morning sickness and crafting was the last thing on my “just get through the day” mind, before I packed it up in a box and dragged it around central Queensland with us. The end of 2103, Beetle baby came along, and the blanket was put aside, before coming back out for 2014 for Camp Coochie. Slowly slowly, a row or two at a time, it inched closer to being done. Then around May of this year, I realised how truly close I was, and I was full force mojo. Our July road trip was a bit of a hiccup in the marathon to the finish – while 10,000km in the car would have been ideal to get it done, by this stage it was simply too large to fit in, and so I took other projects, but once I was home, I was hook hook hooking constantly to get it done. And last Friday, as I sat up with a sick baby, the final stitch went in somewhere around 1am. I only maybe 1/3 of the ends to weave in as I’d crocheted over a lot of them as I went (best idea ever), and half an hour on Saturday was enough to get that done and it was FINISHED! I have even slept under it a time or two (see previous comment about the sleeping baby).And the stats, because I’m a numbers girl!!

Width – 280 stitches (approximately 60″)

Rows – 144

Time taken – approximately 86 hours, with each row averaging 1/2 to 3/4 of an hour

Yarn – 3 balls each of green, blue & red, 1.5 each of pink and white, using 200g balls from Bendigo Woollen Mills (a mix of Persian, Luxury, Classic & Spring Cotton)

Hook size – 4.5mm

It’s done! It’s done! It’s done! I am so so pleased to have this blanket finished and off my WIP list and usable. Would I do it again? Yes! In fact I am already 11 rows into a new blanket using a pattern that I developed with Car and Alley, and loving it so much. I will blog more about that later in the month. Speaking of this month, it’s October! And October is always Blogtoberfest around here. This year there is no official Blogtoberfest, but after doing it for a few years, I would miss it, so I am going to commit to posting every day in October even with no official event to join in with. If you are a fellow Blogtoberfest refugee, feel free to leave a comment below and we can encourage each other during the month.